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A comment on FCC will vote on plan to remove outdated amateur radio technical restrictions. Parent comment

Re:FCC will vote on plan to remove outdated amateur radio te... by sterlind on Saturday October 28, 2023 @06:15PM (#38053913)
what about allowing authentication, rather than encryption? like, let people send MAC-protected checksums and signatures to make plaintext verifiable.

I think it'd open up the possibilities of like, weather balloons streaming their telemetry openly, while ensuring the data they're reporting hasn't been forged, or letting anyone send random commands to it.

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Re:FCC will vote on plan to remove outdated amateur radio te... by jcalvinowens on Saturday October 28, 2023 @06:31PM (#38054000)
> what about allowing authentication, rather than encryption? like, let people send MAC-protected checksums and signatures to make plaintext verifiable.

That's already allowed, and commonly done.

97.113(a)(4) doesn't say "no cryptography", it says (in part):

>> No amateur station shall transmit [...] messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning.

The scheme you're describing doesn't obscure the meaning of your transmissions, so it is perfectly legal.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

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Re:FCC will vote on plan to remove outdated amateur radio te... by gloyoyo on Sunday October 29, 2023 @12:20AM (#38055788)
>> I like that part.
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